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May 18th, 2005

Liquid Courage

I’m fairly comfortable playing $1 SNGs and .10/.25 no limit hold em. However, anytime I try to break out of that box, I’m smacked down like a wayward child. After my dismal week at the tables, I resolved to regroup and try again. I spent some time rereading sections in Super/System and fabulous secret powers were revealed to me the day I held aloft my magic sword and said, “by the power of Grayskull…I have the power!”

Oops. Sorry about that. After that Halloween truth-or-dare session gone awry, it’s been hard to control.

Uhm, what was I talking about? Oh, right. I suck at poker. Okay, so things really do make more sense now that I’ve played a few hundred hands. I took a shot of Mountain Dew LiveWire for courage and sat down at a .25/.50 game. I’ll be the first to admit it: I was playing scared. The difference is that this time I KNEW I was playing scared and resolved to tread lightly. This seemed to do me some good, and I walked away an hour later with an extra 100BB jangling in my virtual pockets.

Thanks to my nifty bloglines subscription, I realize I’m not the only one who struggles with the initial step into a higher limit. It seems people typically tend to “play scared,” even at $5/$10. Any tips on how to handle it?

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Posted by Jaxia in Poker

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 18th, 2005 at 2:55 pm and is filed under Poker. You can follow any responses to this entry through the comments RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

3 Responses to “Liquid Courage”

  1. Beck says:

    First of all, Super/System isn’t very helpful, especially at low limits. The hyper-aggressive style of play they recommend doesn’t translate well into looser, lower-stakes games where people won’t fold weak hands, and won’t “respect” raises.

    I’d recommend picking up this book to start out with. That should give you a much better idea of strong fundamental strategy for looser games.

    As far as feeling comfortable when you move up in limits, I find that the only thing that really works is just gradually working your way up. Play a limit until you’re completely at ease with it, then move up to the next bracket and just hang on until that too becomes comfortable. If you get a bit of a beating, back off a bracket for a while until you regain comfort. One of the worst things you can do is play outside of your comfort zone. You will make a lot of costly mistakes, mostly from giving free cards, passing on raising opportunities, and folding the best hand.

    It also helps, at least for me, to not think about your bets as being real money, but just “units”. ‘Course, that doesn’t apply in no-limit, where it’s pretty hard to forget about the monetary value when you’re not betting in discreet increments.

    May 20th, 2005 at 12:03 am
  2. Jaxia says:

    Not that I have a lot of experience, but I’m doing better at no limit vs limit. I have Winning Low Limit Hold Em and Theory of Poker. When I first started playing, I skimmed all of them. Now I’m just trying to pay more attention.

    When I see chips, I see dollar signs ;) I realize it all just takes time.

    Do you play online much, or just B&M?

    May 20th, 2005 at 10:35 am
  3. Beck says:

    Thus far just live games (Borgata in Atlantic City mostly, also one fantastic game at Harrah’s in Lake Charles). At some point I’ll likely delve into the land of online poker, but haven’t bothered fixing my home computer since nuking the registry.

    I’ve read in numerous places that limit players often have a hard time transitioning to no-limit and vice-versa. I’ve only ever played NL in “friendly” games (nothing like fleecing your friends for a few hundred bucks).

    If you’re better at NL, you might as well stick with that–the profit potential is higher, and NL requires more skill to really perfect anyway.

    If I ever do get online, I’ll shoot you the sites/screen names I’m using. Knaeve shall ride again!

    May 20th, 2005 at 8:06 pm

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